How to Land a Movie Star novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Editor

Corin stood at the end of the hall with his keys in his hand.

I closed my fist around the little black button so hard the felt strip bent.

"Forgot my wallet," he said.

He picked it up off the table by the door.

He looked at my closed hand and then at my face, for exactly as long as he had looked at me in the casting office.

"Goodnight, Hedy."

He went up the stairs, and he didn't ask.

I lay awake until four with the chair under the door handle and the button under my pillow.

At ten forty the next morning I took two buses to Glendale.

I would not ride in his truck to meet the person I was about to meet.

I had left a note on the steel counter that said "Errands" in my smallest handwriting.

The Galleria parking structure smelled of hot tar and old french fries.

On level four, a white SUV sat alone in a corner space with its engine off.

The woman at the wheel rolled down the window.

She was in her forties, with a blunt grey bob and a camel trench coat.

Reading glasses were pushed up on her head, and she looked like a principal who ran a very profitable zoo.

"Hedy DeHaven," she said. "I'd get in, but you won't."

"No," I said.

"Good instincts."

In the pocket of my cardigan, my old phone was running the voice memo app.

I had pressed record on the bus, and I had checked it four times.

"I'm here to give back the eight thousand," I said.

"Is that what you've decided?"

"I only used seven thousand four hundred of it. The rest is in a sock. I can get it to you by Friday."

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